Chapter 72: Hidden Time Limit |
After stepping into the hallway, Bai Mu crossed two neckties and bound the woman's wrists behind her back, much like a police officer handcuffing a criminal. At the same time, he pulled the gas mask over her head.
Only her feet remained free. Although her gait was somewhat uncoordinated and she walked with a pronounced limp, she could still control her direction.
Under these circumstances, even if her muscles suddenly spasmed, she wouldn't be able to hurt anyone nearby. At worst, she would just take a tumble to the ground.
"Lucy, hold onto your mother. Be careful not to let her fall," Bai Mu instructed.
Lucy nodded earnestly. She supported her mother as they headed down the stairs, with Bai Mu leading the way to clear a path for them.
Due to the power outage, they had no choice but to take the stairs. Bai Mu switched his title back to "Friend of the Witch," boosting his strength and agility by three points each. Whenever they encountered small groups of Infected, Bai Mu simply swung his Baseball Bat, caving their skulls in. He only resorted to his handgun when faced with larger hordes.
To guarantee the safety of the mother and daughter, he made sure to eliminate every single Infected in their path.
The emergency stairwell was incredibly dim. The voice-activated lights and exit signs had all completely failed. The only illumination came from a partially opened window at the landing of each floor, which allowed a meager sliver of sunlight to filter through.
The sunlight was a dusky yellow. It was already five in the afternoon, and the sun would soon dip below the horizon.
Every three minutes, Bai Mu paused to feed the woman a piece of candy. The candy's effects lasted for five minutes, but he increased the frequency to ensure she was covered in case a sudden emergency prevented him from attending to her.
His candy reserves were incredibly abundant. He had several large, stacked bags of milk candies sitting in his inventory. Even at a rate of one piece every three minutes, he had enough to keep feeding her for days and nights on end.
Without the gas mask to filter her view, the bloody scenes were completely exposed to Lucy. The corpses battered to death by the Baseball Bat were certainly not a pretty sight; brain matter occasionally splattered across the floor, and the air was thick with the stench of blood.
Lucy's small face was pale with fright, yet she steadily supported her mother, taking it one step at a time down the stairs, stepping over the grotesque corpses along the way.
She was terrified, but she was also incredibly brave. She didn't need Bai Mu to hold her hand to finish this grueling trek.
It took them about half an hour to descend twenty-three flights of stairs. Bai Mu finally led them to the ground floor, continuing down into the basement parking garage where they located Lucy's mother's car.
It was a dark yellow pickup truck, a very common family vehicle.
Bai Mu secured Lucy's mother in the passenger seat. Once she was positioned, he tied her down tightly with several layers of restraints, leaving absolutely no room for her to break free. Lucy was placed in the back seat.
At the exit of the underground garage, a pile-up of crashed cars blocked the way out. A small group of Infected had also gathered there, bathed in the fading light of the setting sun pouring in through the ramp.
Bai Mu pumped the brakes, stepped out of the vehicle, and stood near the incline.
He cast a skill aimed at the exit. A Charger violently burst forward, stampeding like a maddened bull.
With a deafening crash, the makeshift barricade was smashed wide open. The first victim the Charger grabbed was one of the Infected, but since there were no walls along its direct charging path, it blasted straight out of the underground parking lot and slammed heavily into the distant ground above.
The massive commotion successfully lured away the remaining Infected clustered at the exit, allowing Bai Mu to smoothly drive the pickup truck out onto the main road.
The city streets were still a chaotic cacophony of noise. After festering for an entire afternoon, the sheer number of Infected had vastly overwhelmed the normal human population. It was the absolute peak of the chaos. Every remaining survivor had finally realized the true scale of the danger and disaster, and they were fleeing outward like madmen.
Truth be told, trying to drive out of the city center at a time like this was an incredibly daunting task.
Bai Mu had no choice but to use Cherry Bombs to clear the way. He hurled the bright red, furious cherries into the congested intersections, seized the perfect moment to floor the gas pedal, and sped away from the deafening clamor before more Infected could be drawn to the area.
Lucy crawled over from the back seat to the front, snuggling closely into her mother's embrace.
The cabin was completely silent. Lucy's mother's symptoms were growing increasingly severe. Even with the candy, the windows of clarity where she could actually speak were terribly short, so she simply stopped trying to talk altogether.
Instead, she just gazed down at the child in her arms with profound tenderness, cherishing this hard-won time together.
By six o'clock in the evening, Bai Mu had finally fought his way out of the downtown area, turning onto a remote backroad.
At the edge of the horizon, the massive, blood-red sun was slowly setting.
Lucy's breathing suddenly grew ragged and rapid. Her small face flushed with a burning heat as she let out a couple of harsh coughs.
"Mommy..." she whispered softly, her eyes turning glazed and unfocused.
Bai Mu fed her a piece of candy, which helped her regain a bit of clarity.
The dormant virus had finally erupted within Lucy's body as well.
It wasn't particularly surprising. She was a carrier of the virus from the very beginning. Excluding an outsider like Bai Mu, every single person in this city had been infected.
Although the virus fully broke out today, it wasn't as if everyone had just caught it today.
An airborne virus like this was impossible to hide from. Unless Lucy had worn a specially developed gas mask much earlier and never taken it off for even a single second, it was virtually impossible for her to remain uninfected.
Lucy was not some special survivor blessed with unique antibodies. If Bai Mu hadn't intervened, in a month's time, she would transform into a Witch, left to weep in the dark—lonely, sorrowful, and completely abandoned.
She wasn't an asymptomatic carrier either; the onset of her symptoms had just triggered slightly later than the people outside.
This Script had a hidden time limit. Regardless of whether the Players managed to fulfill her wish, she was destined to die at a fixed point in time.
Of course, if they hadn't allowed her to stay by her mother's side all this time, the viral outbreak in her body might have been delayed a little longer. That brief buffer period was the exact window left for Players to complete the optional mission.
Right before nightfall, Bai Mu drove the pickup truck back to their house in the Brook District.
He didn't make any attempt to flee the city or cross the Mississippi River; he simply escorted the mother and daughter back to their own home.
Lucy's mother was completely beyond speech by now. She forced herself to slowly slide out of the passenger seat and shuffled her way to the front door.
Beside the porch swing sat a rubber ball that had never been put away. Breathing heavily, Lucy supported her mother as they reached the entrance. She pulled out her keys and unlocked the door.
Inside was a warmly decorated home, complete with pure white flowers blooming beautifully in a vase.
The light switches were useless; the city's entire power grid had completely collapsed.
Standing on her tiptoes, Lucy guided her mother to sit down at the dining table. She had something very specific she wanted to do. Walking over to the back of the television set, she retrieved the Candy Box stamped with a rabbit icon.
From her rabbit plush backpack, she pulled out a cake, a candle, and a lighter. The cake was sealed in its own individual wrapper, much like an Ofuo. Unwrapped, it was only about the size of a palm.
At the precise moment day transitioned into night, Lucy lit the candle, stuck it into the cake, and presented it to her mother.
She struggled to pop open the Candy Box, pulling out a colorful greeting card adorned with a drawing of two little stick figures, and placed it gently in front of her mother.
By this point, her face was as flushed as someone suffering from a severe fever. Even though Bai Mu had fed her the candy, she was still feeling quite woozy and disoriented.
Bai Mu didn't disturb them. He simply stood to the side and watched in total silence. An outsider had no right to interrupt such a moment.
Bai Mu heard a choking, sobbing sound slip from Lucy's mother's gaping mouth. This heavily infected woman—whose eyeballs were blood-red and who couldn't even close her jaws—tremblingly reached out her hand, yet she didn't dare to actually embrace her own daughter.
The mirror on the wall reflected her current, horrifying appearance. Her eyes were bulging and completely bloodshot, her facial muscles twitched and spasmed uncontrollably, and her skin was as deathly pale as a corpse's. She had fully transitioned from a human into something terrifying, now only retaining the faintest flicker of consciousness.
Any normal child who saw her would burst into tears of sheer terror. She looked exactly like a vengeful ghost straight out of a horror movie; not even the best special effects makeup artist could recreate such an authentic look.
Bai Mu wasn't even sure if the candy was still working on her anymore, because the last time he fed her a piece, he had distinctly felt that her body temperature was turning ice-cold.
What was actually anchoring her consciousness at this exact moment? Was it the so-called clarity-inducing special effect of the candy, or was it something else entirely?
Bai Mu couldn't find an answer to that question. He just watched as two streams of tears slowly rolled down the corners of the woman's eyes.
Lucy tenderly hugged her mother's forehead, cradling it exactly the same way her mother had once cradled her.
"Happy birthday, Mommy."
Her voice was incredibly soft, floating down as gently as a drifting feather.
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